While in a meeting with a colleague, I was surprised to discover five 2000's era Dell PC's running windows XP. After a brief discussion on what she is using the computers for and what she would like to use them for, we migrated all 3 to much nicer, safer, modern, and faster Lubuntu Linux.

About a week later I started my first Donors Choose project to bring a Raspberry pi computer center to the class room. It was such a big success that I have now gotten 5 Centers funded, with a 6th underway, not sharing a link for an unfunded project.

Just wanted to share as it's been a huge hit all over my school and it's simple enough for others to replicate.

Microsoft no longer provides support for Windows XP, unless you pay really big bucks. This means there are no more security updates and many security programs may not work now or in the future. You should look at upgrading to Windows 10. You could do a cost study to see what an upgrade to windows 10 would cost compared to buying the Pi and all the accessories to get an equivalent computer. You will need the Pi, case, power supply, SD cards, an HDMI to VGA patch cord.

You may also need to consider the time to install and teach the use of CUPS, and Linux, and substitute software when there is no exact match for a Windows program.

Not so long ago the UK health system came to halt because they were on XP and did not update their systems with the latest patches. Note that the UK is paying Microsoft for continued XP support.

I should a elaborate a bit more, but first things first, my above mention project got funded in less than 24 hours.

The laptops running Windows XP were not connected to the Internet. They were only used to run games installed from CD-ROMs. After I migrated them to Lubuntu, they were a loud back on the network.

The 21st-century reference is more to the fact that this particular teacher went out and found a bunch of old laptops, rather than having no computers at all.

Before I started this series of projects, or as I have been referring to them, my personal guerrilla war to drag my school into the 21st-century, the majority of classrooms had no computers for student use.

I've now have received 6 R-pi centers funded and just posted my seventh. Thats over $5,000 in cloud funding. Most of the expense goes to the 1080p monitors, but with out the R-Pi's none of this would even be possible.

Right now all the Pi's are running independently but am going to be migrating them to Pi-net when time permits. I'm the physical education teacher and this is all being done in my spare time.

I should a elaborate a bit more, but first things first, my above mention project got funded in less than 24 hours.

The laptops running Windows XP were not connected to the Internet. They were only used to run games installed from CD-ROMs. After I migrated them to Lubuntu, they were a loud back on the network.

The 21st-century reference is more to the fact that this particular teacher went out and found a bunch of old laptops, rather than having no computers at all.

Before I started this series of projects, or as I have been referring to them, my personal guerrilla war to drag my school into the 21st-century, the majority of classrooms had no computers for student use.

I've now have received 6 R-pi centers funded and just posted my seventh. Thats over $5,000 in cloud funding. Most of the expense goes to the 1080p monitors, but with out the R-Pi's none of this would even be possible.

Right now all the Pi's are running independently but am going to be migrating them to Pi-net when time permits. I'm the physical education teacher and this is all being done in my spare time.

..are you aware that the RPT / RPF have a x86 Debian Stretch with Raspberry Pi Desktop Release ???

...an HDMI to VGA patch cord....
(a) Such a thing doesn't exist. HDMI to VGA takes active conversion to change the digital signals to analog, and
(b) Why would you need one anyway when almost all monitors made in the last 10 to 12 years have either HDMI or DVI-D inputs and a simple cable will suffice.

The article mentions "other problems" but does not detail them. From 30 years is IS Auditing and the lack up updating their OS, I expect that their whole attitude toward updating their systems and administration skills resulted in out of date anti-virus software, updated privileges, not making sure incremental backups and full backups were completed successfully and completed on time in a regular schedule.

Since the issue went on for some time I expect that there was no complete cleaning of all systems before reestablishing the network connections and that those 7 rouge computers kept reinfecting the entire network.

Not that the HHS IT issues aren't interesting, but here is a list of links to my already funded Donors Choose (DC) computer lab projects. I'm up to just under $5,000 in funding just on my DC account and I have had supportive colleagues do the same. I'm not going to post to live funding campaigns here as I'm trying to spread this idea not fund my projects, if your interested in my current live funding campaigns it's not be hard to find.

Are we missing the point of this thread? This educator has replaced ancient Windows technology in the classroom with Raspberry Pis, using an amazing crowd-sourced funding model (donorschoose.org), allowing for a physical computing opportunity for his students. That's amazing, and more relevant than how many computers in the UK health system were running x version of Windows.

The point appears to be crowdfunding such as Donors Choose can allow schools which don't have an IT budget obtain Raspberry Pi. The alternative is to ask parents to send SD cards and Pi Zero computers along with the supplies of toilette, tissue and copy papers that are usually asked for--maybe not so easily done, depending on the education, involvement and prosperity of the parents.

As for asking our parents for money, we do but over two thirds of our student population live in poverty, 5% of her students currently live in the homeless shelter system, we also have a large refugee population. Money's tight.

Since mid January we have funded 12 computer centers. Thats over 50 R-pie's, 48 1080p monitors, mice keyboards, 3 3D printers, and 4 robots . All of this for around $12,000 and the help of Donors Choose.

To remain competitive in an information-equalized global economy, we need college graduates who can step back from niche specialization and find the hidden connections between fields that will power innovation in the next century.